Positioned along Highway 43 in northwest Alberta, Fox Creek sits roughly 259 kilometres northwest of Edmonton and about 199 kilometres southeast of Grande Prairie, at an elevation of 808 metres above sea level. The community falls within the Upper Peace planning region and is entirely surrounded by the Municipal District of Greenview No. 16. Nearby natural features include Iosegun Lake, located to the north, into which the Fox Creek watercourse drains. That same creek, which runs along the western edge of the townsite, gave the community its name when Ryan Krause and Victor Heath selected the site on June 6, 1952. The original survey of the townsite took place over three days in late October 1955, and residents began arriving shortly after Highway 43 officially opened that same fall, drawn primarily by work in the forestry and oil and gas exploration industries.
Fox Creek developed quickly through the late 1950s and early 1960s. Alberta Forest Services built the first two homes in 1956 to support a ranger station that opened the following year, and the community’s earliest roads, 1 Street West and Highway Avenue, were also laid out in 1956. The first major oil discovery in the area, the Kaybob North Field, came in 1957, followed by twelve total oil and gas field discoveries between 1957 and 1962, including the significant Kaybob South Field found in 1961. Those discoveries prompted the construction of five gas plants over the eleven years following the Kaybob South find. The community’s post office opened on March 18, 1958 under the name Iosegun Lake Post Office, a designation it held for a full decade before being officially renamed the Fox Creek Post Office. The 1961 Census of Canada recorded the settlement’s population at 144 people, listed under the name Iosegun Lake. By 1966, that figure had grown to 187 residents. On July 19, 1967, Premier Ernest Manning signed the order incorporating Fox Creek as the New Town of Fox Creek, with a three-member Board of Administrators appointed to govern the newly established municipality.